The present invention relates to a printing control system and a printing system which are capable of reducing the usage of printing sheets.
From the viewpoint of global environmental protection focused in recent years, the printing technology field is increasingly demanded to save resources including printing materials used by image forming apparatuses such as printing sheets and coloring materials. Among the functions of image forming apparatuses, there are functions of the type which can reduce the number of printing sheets to be used for printing, such as a double-side printing function for printing images on both sides of a printing sheet and an aggregate printing function for printing a plurality of images on one printing sheet by scaling the images down, thereby facilitating the resources saving.
For example, a print setting proposing system is disclosed which is configured to present a user interface (UI) which allows the user to select a desired print application from at least two print applications in response to a request for printing from the user, propose a printing condition suitable for the print application that has been selected by the user using the UI, prepare printing data attached with the printing condition in response to approval of the user to the proposal, and transfer the printing data thus prepared to a printer (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-302653).
Also disclosed is a printing information processing device which is configured to perform comparison between the print saving capability obtained from print setting information contained in a printing job and the print saving capability of an economical print setting previously established according to the print application of the printing job, select the print setting having the higher print saving capability, and perform printing according to the print setting selected (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-180085).
The conventional print setting proposing system, however, involves a problem that the user is imparted with a sensation of troublesomeness because presentation of the user interface and the proposal of a printing condition are made every time the user makes a request for printing.
Because the conventional printing information processing device presumes the application of a printing job based on template information, keywords and schedule information that are contained in printing data, even a printing job that should not be changed in final form, such as poster printing and tab sheet printing, might be performed by economical printing. If a printing job having a setting for poster printing or tab sheet printing is executed by the economical printing, the resulting printed matter cannot be of any use and hence is wasteful.
Accordingly, a feature of the present invention is to provide a printing control system and a printing system which are capable of preventing the resulting printed matter from becoming useless and wasteful and motivating the user to save the usage of printing sheets by making a proposal of printing sheet saving to the user only when the requested printing job is a printing job that will raise no problem even if the final form of the printed matter is changed.